So when it comes to things that I've been doing lately, during the last month or so, it has to be said that I've been rather busy. Once my job started again in August, I've had much less spare time than I did during my summer vacation.
Indeed, when I was on a vacation for 10+ weeks, it wasn't that difficult to progress with my artistic projects. Since I could slack most of the day, I didn't have a strict schedule about when I needed to write or when I needed to practice playing piano.
So once my work was about to start again, I wasn't that confident that I would be able keep my artistic projects going. I wasn't sure that I would find the energy and the time to practice playing piano at least one hour per day and also write every day for an hour.
Fortunately, having now been back to working for roughly a month, it can be said that I've managed to keep my routines going. I haven't been slacking at all, even though I also started studying to get a degree on the side and that I've been having a cold for some time.
Music-wise, one of the big things that happened was that I asked some of my colleagues whether they wanted to hear me play some songs of their choosing. I thought that this way I would have to challenge myself and not play it safe all the time.
Naturally, once one of my colleagues wanted to hear 'Clocks' by Coldplay, that turned out to be a real challenge. This intermediate to advanced version of the song was pretty difficult to master and I had to spend at least 50 hours on the song to be able to play it well.
Technique-wise, the way you have to move your hands is so demanding that it felt like I had to learn play blindfolded. This song has greatly improved my basic technique and it's clear that it was a good idea to let others choose songs for me to learn.
Writing-wise, it can also be said that I've been rather active with my book project (WW2 adventure story). I've managed to write every day too, which has meant that slowly but steadily I've progressed with the story and have reached new chapters.
After all, even though I had my doubts, I've managed to write at least one full wordpad page per evening. This has been a pace that is good enough and doesn't require too much of my attention especially if I'm not having a good day.
Quality-wise, I obviously can't make any promises, but this relaxing pace has given me time to assess things and come up with new ideas. I've been able to come up with ideas that I think have been pretty solid and have made sense both thematically and structurally.
In that sense, when it comes to the rest of this year and things as a whole, I think things are looking pretty good at the moment. I've managed to find some much-needed balance in my life and these projects have helped to keep me relatively happy lately.
After all, even though playing piano and writing a book do take a lot of your energy, I don't get too obsessed with either of the projects. They kinda even themselves out stress-wise, so when I have met my daily quotas, I don't have time or energy to worry about them too much.
Still, when it all is said and done, there's no guarantee that the book is going to be that great or published, but it looks it's going to be finished. That alone will be a solid achievement, so whether it's good enough to be a success story or anything else, that is almost beside the point.
